DNA Edit: Sikh outreach - Govt has managed to assuage feelings of the community

The Modi government’s Sikh outreach serves two important purposes.

One, it assuages the hurt sentiments of the community, which was battered during the Congress regimes of 1980s, including the horrific 1984 Delhi riots. Two, it derails Pakistan’s ‘K2’ or the Kashmir & Khalistan plan. The decision to release eight Sikh prisoners and commute the death sentence of Babbar Khalsa’s Balwant Singh Rajoana, the main conspirator in the 1995 assassination of former Punjab CM Beant Singh, should be seen in this light.

India has announced that eight Sikh prisoners in Indian jails would be prematurely released in a special exemption coinciding with the 550th birth anniversary of Guru Nanak. It also said that the death sentence handed to Rajoana was being commuted to a life sentence.

This follows close on the heels of the virtual eradication of a 35-year-old “black list” that prevented 312 members of the Sikh community holding foreign passports from travelling to India due to their alleged role during the Khalistan movement in Punjab.

These moves have been in the pipeline since 2015 and were accelerated soon after the Modi government returned to power this year. Its twin objectives are to heal the wounds of the Sikh community and “wean away hardliners living abroad” from being co-opted by Pakistan’s spy agency, ISI, to revive militancy in Punjab.

The process began with a meeting of Modi with Sikh groups in London on November 12, 2015. There, the demand to facilitate the return of radicalised Sikh elements was raised. In addition, the government has fast-tracked the 1984 riots cases and persuaded Pakistan to allow pilgrims with Overseas Citizenship of India (OCI) cards to travel on the soon-to-be-completed Kartarpur Corridor.